An alternative to World Bank climate loans

Tim Jones, used to be policy officer

Some of us may have been surprised to wake up this morning to hear that a hosepipe ban may be introduced soon in north-west England following a lack of rain. For the past few years the ‘weather story’ in the UK has been one of cold, wet summers. Those unable to distinguish between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ have used this story to spread absurd falsities about climate change, such as the Conservative MEP who told me “the world has been in a cooling phase for the last ten years”.

Maybe the lack of rain in the north-west of England will open the mainstream media’s eyes to the true climate story which continues unabated. The decade just ended was the warmest ever recorded. 2010 is so far on track to be the warmest year ever.

Across the world we continue to see how these changes in climate affect real people. India has been suffering from a heat-wave, with temperatures reaching almost 50°C. The monsoon has made a stuttering start, after one of India’s worst ever droughts last year. Over 2 million people have been displaced from their homes by extreme floods in China.

But there has been some good news recently. This weekend a United Nations fund for helping developing countries adapt to climate change agreed to its first four projects in Nicaragua, Senegal, Solomon Islands and Pakistan. The projects will help protect communities from floods and enable farmers to adapt their crops to a changing climate. Moreover, all developing countries can apply to the fund for money to help in their fight against the climate change caused primarily by rich countries.

But the UN fund is massively under-resourced. Rich countries are failing to give it the money they owe in compensation for causing climate change. The UK government has given it just £600,000 – and outrageously, they are ‘giving’ this as a loan.

In contrast the UK has given £225 million out of the aid budget to a World Bank fund it helped to create which is also supposed to help developing countries tackle climate change. But this fund has yet to disburse any money at all.

Those developing countries which may receive some money in the future from the World Bank have been hand-picked by rich countries, further increasing the power of the rich to tell the poor what to do. It was the threat by rich countries to withhold this vital money which forced many developing countries to go along with the unjust and unfair Copenhagen Accord in December.

Moreover, if and when the World Bank fund does disburse any money, half of it will be loans, creating new financial debt for the global south rather than moving towards paying the debt we owe for causing climate change. In Copenhagen last year, the World Bank told me it was the UK government in particular which pushed for half the money to be loans.

Creating and supporting fair ways of providing compensation for the climate damage we have caused is central to global solutions to tackle climate change. Take action here to tell new UK Secretary of State for International Development to stop forcing climate loans on developing countries.